


Court and Spark

by Nerissa



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Bad Flirting, Brother-Sister Relationships, Explicit Language, F/M, Relationship Advice, Self Confidence Issues, Sexual Content, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:23:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hansel is consistently terrible at flirting. There's a reason for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Court and Spark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subwaycars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaycars/gifts).



> This story contains a fleeting moment of non-consensual touching. It is quickly and thoroughly dealt with, but please be warned all the same.

Hansel rubbed his palms against his thighs, and tried to assure himself that he wouldn’t fuck this one up. It should be easy. The girl fancied him. She’d given him that look across the crowded pub, the one he knew meant she wanted to see what he could do with his hands.

He knew what that look meant because when he’d been sixteen, the third time a girl had given him that look, he asked Gretel what it meant.

She told him.

He had thought his sister was funning, at first. He couldn’t imagine a girl he’d never met would want to do that to him. He said as much, and Gretel gave him that Look, that _I think Mother dropped you on your head_ look, and he realized she meant it.

“She really wants to—uh—do that?”

“Yes, Hansel. She really wants to fuck you.”

Even then he wouldn’t have pursued it, except Gretel said that maybe he should, and he usually did what Gretel said. So he’d gone after that one, and it sort of worked out, only he couldn’t stop talking to her about what it looked like when you shot a witch through the eye. In the end the girl had doubled over in the corner of her little attic room, retching into the chamber pot, and he’d had to finish himself off.

When he told Gretel about it she gave him that same Look, and that’s how he knew he’d somehow got it all wrong. Not that the girl casting up her accounts hadn’t also been a hint, but Hansel had always needed his sister to clarify some things for him.

“So what should I do?” he’d wondered. Gretel, head propped in her hand, staring down at him from her bed, shrugged eloquently.

“Get really good at fucking yourself?”

“You know what I mean.”

She sighed. It was too dark for him to see her roll her eyes, but he knew she was doing it all the same.

“Shit, Hansel, I don’t know. Compliment her. Talk about _her._ Find something nice to say about how she is.”

“You mean, like, her skin and stuff?”

Gretel paused. “Her . . . skin?”

“Yeah. I like their skin, usually.”

“All right, that . . . yeah, that sounds good. Talk about her skin.”

So the next time a girl gave him that look, he escorted her to the corner of an open meadow, sat her on a rock and stroked the back of her hand. He told her how lovely her skin was, and said it looked like milk and honey.

That part went okay. She liked it, he could tell. But somehow he also couldn’t help mentioning that time he and Gretel had drowned the Fox Witch in the moat, then skinned her and hung her pelt for all to see. He actually got pretty graphic with the description, and re-enacted some of Gretel’s part in the thing, just because Gretel had been magnificent for that whole case.

For some reason the girl didn’t like the story at all. She turned chalky and silent, jumped to her feet and left him in the meadow, baffled and half-hard and thinking maybe girls were more complicated that his sister let on.

He told Gretel about that one, too. She gasped, actually _gasped_ , and said “Fuck, Hansel! Fucking thick, you are. You’re lucky she doesn’t have her family in here to take your head!”

So apparently that one was his fault, too. He just couldn’t figure out why. He’d done everything Gretel said he should, and he was quick to point that out.

“You said it was okay to talk about their skin!”

“Not in the flaying sense. You never talk about _flaying_ with a girl you want to fuck. That’s a rule.”

“There are rules?” he asked plaintively, and Gretel smothered a groan in her palms. Hansel frowned.

“What about hair?” he suggested. Gretel mumbled something he didn’t catch. “What?”

“Ugh. Nothing. Never mind. Hair’s . . . fine, Hansel. But _no_ scalping references, got it?”

He said yes, and he really thought he had it. He went over everything in his head, all the nice things you could say about a girl’s hair that didn’t reference scalping. There were actually quite a lot of them, which surprised him. He told Gretel how many nice things you could say about hair, and she didn’t look surprised. Just sort of bit her lip and patted his hand and said yes, well, good job thinking of that many.

Gretel was so supportive.

So the next time, this time, his seventeenth birthday, they were having a lot of drinks and Gretel was buying, bragging him up to everyone in the pub, telling anybody who would listen how wonderful he was (which was probably the ale talking; Gretel didn’t compliment him more than once in a fortnight unless she was deep in her cups, but whatever, nobody there knew that, Gretel was being ludicrously lavish with her praise of him and they were eating it up).

The pretty blonde in the low blouse, a buxom young lady with two thick ropes of braids looped over her ears, listened more closely than anyone. She kept giving him that _look_ , hot and smoking. He knew what it meant because his sister had taught him, and he resolved that this time he wouldn’t fuck it up.

The village girl waited until most of the listeners were passed out on the table—even Gretel seemed to have drifted off into a pleasant haze, farther gone than she usually ever allowed herself to get—before she took him out back, into the alley, and sank to her knees in front of him.

He tangled his fingers in the braids, breathing compliments about her hair, how it felt like sunshine in his palms, and was almost poetic for once. Then he stuck his finger on a pin and hissed an expletive.

“I’ve hurt you?” the girl worried. He shook his head, plucked the offending pin from the nest of golden plaits and held it up in the moonlight.

“Just a pin,” he said, and he should have stopped there, should have shut his mouth when she opened hers, and that would have been the end of it. Except he turned the pin a little, it caught the silver of the moon, and it made him think of Gretel.

"Aw, hey, you wear these in your hair too? So does my sister.” He angled the pin, studying it. “Hers are straight pins, though. I’ve never seen these little bent ones. I wonder if she knows about 'em. She's always losing hair pins."

The girl unlaced his breeches, but somehow her movements weren’t quite as certain as before, so Hansel hastened to add some more hair-talk, just to reassure her.

"You know, one time we were trying to track this boar witch, really nasty thing, looks all bristly and wide with kind of a pig snout? Only Gretel kept dropping her hairpins. Not—“ he stopped. Gasped at the feel of her mouth around him, then resumed, “on purpose. Gretel’s real careful. But she wore her hair up around her head in this one braid back then, because that was how all the girls wore it. You ever wear your hair like that? Unn, _fuck_ that feels good . . .”

He shut his eyes, her earnest ministrations almost enough to silence him, but the memory of Gretel’s coronet, nut-brown and gleaming in the late day sun, held his focus.

He kept talking.

“Her pins kept falling out, dropping to the path, and this boar witch, she snuck around behind us and used 'em to stay on our trail— _shit_ , where'd you learn how to do that? Christ, that . . . that's nice—so the boar witch finally caught up to us, damn near put my eyes out before we could kill her. Gretel felt awful 'bout that. She doesn't wear her hair in that braid, anym—”

He broke off, gasping, spilling into her mouth and he couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything for a second but choke on the next words he’d meant to speak.

“That . . . uh, that was real nice. Thank you.” He groped for the right words. “Should we do this again, sometime?"

She gave him a different look, one whose meaning Gretel had never explained, and gently shook her head.

“I don’t think so.”

Then she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and retreated to the pub. Hansel stood in the alley and wondered if he should follow her, or wait, or just go back to his room alone.

Gretel would know. He’d ask her.

He went into the pub to find her, but as soon as he stepped inside he forgot about the village girl. In the pub he found Gretel nearest kin to unconscious, a big, broad man bent over her, his fat ugly hands kneading her breast through her blouse. Gretel was too far gone to tell the guy if she wanted him to do that or not, which meant he shouldn’t be doing it at all.

So Hansel pulled his gun, the smaller one he kept strapped to his hip in case of unexpected witches and wholly expected letches who tried to feel up his sister, and levelled it at the guy.

“Hey.”

The man jerked and looked up, bleary eyed but sober enough that he should have known Gretel wasn’t asking for that. Which meant he had to suffer for it.  Hansel wasn’t any too clear on what the rules were when it came to talking to the girls you wanted to fuck, but he knew too damn well what the rules were when it came to his sister: you touch her like that, you have to pay.

Hansel might not have been a big believer in every rule out there, but when it came to that one, he was fucking _devout_.

He cocked the gun. The man’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus on it.

Hansel said, conversationally, “you’re going to step back far enough that I don’t get your insides all over my sister.” One side of his mouth twisted up, sort of cheerful-like. “Keep touching her, and you’ll be lucky to die before I’ve shot you twenty times.”

The man stepped back.

It sort of worked. Hansel hadn’t decided where he was going to shoot the guy yet, but Gretel, who was just barely sensible, must have been mulling it over longer than he had. While Hansel was still trying to choose, Gretel drew her own gun, pressed it lazily against the man’s hand—the hand that had been touching her—and shot it off. Then her head lolled back and she was out.

So Gretel’s blouse got spattered, but only a little, and it wasn’t even Hansel’s fault. He would definitely remind her of that if she complained about the spatter. As he carried her up to their room, leaving the howling drunk and a stunned audience behind,  he assessed the damage to her clothing and decided she’d been splashed with lots more of lots worse in the past.

In their room he gently peeled her out of her bodice and breeches, scraped bits of flesh off the garments and tossed it out the window for the cats to enjoy. Good as new.

He called for hot water, but nobody brought it. Gretel, if she’d been awake, would have explained they were nervous of a brother and sister who’d blow a fellow’s hand off for touching the sister’s breast. Hansel would have said good, they should be, and Gretel would have agreed.

He heated the water himself over the tiny  fire and used it to fill the wash basin. As he bent over the narrow bed, daubing sweat and gore from his sister’s face, Gretel stirred at his touch and opened her eyes. Her gaze was already clearer, the booze-addled haze slipping away.

“Hans?”

“Hey.” He set the cloth aside, watching her closely. “How you feeling, sis?”

She took careful stock. “Dizzy. Woozy. Fucking headache.” She licked her lips. “Still drunk. Probably going to lose my supper in a few minutes. Stupid birthday . . . all your fault, for being born.”

“I know,” he accepted blame without hesitation. “Sorry.”

“Nngh. Well, no help for it now.” She looked down at her chemise and bare legs. “You undressed me?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’d hate if it had been that other fellow.”

“Naw. They’re scraping bits of his hand off the walls as we speak. Nice shot, considering.”

She frowned. “His hand? Shit. I was aiming for his dick.”

“Well, if he’s still around when we go down tomorrow, you can take another try.”

She smiled and put up her hand to touch his cheek, brief thanks, congratulations and fond recognition all rolled into one gesture.

“I will.”

He moved the chamber pot to the floorboard below her head, so she wouldn’t have to reach for it when needed. “We’re having great luck in romance tonight, you and me.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“The very sarcastic-ist.”

“What about that girl in the pub? The blonde? I thought she was interested.”

“She was, at first.” He studied his hands. “Then I did my thing and scared her off.”

“Oh, Hansel.” She rubbed his shoulder, consoling. “Did you not do what you’d planned, and talk about her hair? She had such nice hair.”

“Well, yeah. I told her that. I also talked about her hairpins.”

“That . . .” Gretel frowned, trying to process it. “Well, it could be better, but it’s not the worst.”

“I said they were different than yours, but that I thought her pins were better, and maybe you'd like them.”

“Oh,” said Gretel, in a much different tone. “You shouldn't have done that.”

“And then I told her how you were always losing them, until you stopped wearing that braid. Remember your braid? Like a crown, kind of? I thought you looked nice in it, lots nicer than Marta Wahler, no matter what she said about her hair being prettier than yours.” He paused, reflecting on that chapter of their childhood. “Y’know, Marta Wahler was a real bitch.”

Gretel sucked in her lips, hiding a smile.

“But,” Hansel concluded, “I understand why you don't wear it like that now. I told her about that, too. Remember the boar witch?”

Gretel pressed both hands over her mouth, and for a moment he thought she’d be sick. He nudged the chamber pot closer with his toe, but Gretel’s shoulders were not heaving with the threat of her stomach’s rebellion. She was _laughing_. At _him_.

“Christ, Hansel!” She shook her head, eyes bright. Hansel was baffled.

“What? Was that not okay?”

“Christ, Hansel. Just . . .” she covered her eyes, and shook her head again. “Fucking Christ.”

“Never mind Christ, I’d settle for fucking one girl I just met without scaring her off afterward! Or before. Or during. I can’t get the, uh, courting. The wooing parts, I’m shit at those. But so many other men seem to have it. They can just say things, and girls . . . like it.”

“Or they wait until girls are drunk, and do things to them anyway,” Gretel snapped. He flinched, her words piercing deeper than she’d meant them too.

“I’m sorry. I never should have left you alone in there.”

“That’s a fuckwitted thing to say,” Gretel decided. “It’s not your fault I ended up like that. It’s not my fault either, but it’s definitely not yours.”

“Sure it is.” He squeezed her fingers.”It’s my job to keep you safe, just like you do for me.”

She smiled at him, half-drunk, half wistful. “All right, fair enough. But I don’t blame you for him. The fault is his. You got that?” She searched his face for some sign he understood. “At least you’re only shit at courting girls. You aren’t utter shit as a human being.”

He smiled back, crooked, earnest.

“Yeah, that’s something. But still,” his smile slipped, “I wish I’d been there.”

“You were. In the end, when it counted. Next subject.”

“All right,” he relented, “I also wish I were better at the wooing thing.” He studied his hands a moment before looking up into her face. “Why am I so bad at it, Gretel?”

Her expression softened. She spread both hands over his, firm, warm.

“You know why.”

He swallowed. She drew herself up on her knees and flattened her palm over the stubble on his cheek; whispered the truth so it filled and heated the air between them.

“You don’t know how to flirt because you never had to learn.”

Then she leaned into him and sucked, gently, on his bottom lip. She tasted like ale and sweat and gunpowder.

Like _Gretel_.

That was the problem, right there. Gretel was the best. Better than any of the other girls. No matter how nice their hair or skin or any other part of them might have been, it was no good. No matter how nice they were, they were never Gretel.

If Gretel weren’t so insistent he learn how to flirt and attract women so that someday he’d have a shot at a family and a normal life, in case someday he wanted them, he’d never bother with other girls at all. Because other girls could never measure up to his sister.

His sister, who rubbed her palm against his crotch and smiled knowingly at the way his breath caught, released, then stuck in the back of his throat.

“You like that?” she asked softly.

“You know I do,” he rasped.

With Gretel it was so much easier than other girls. She _knew_ him, and he knew her. She could kick his ass home sideways, turn his brain inside out with one lecture, and none of that ever confused him half so much as some strange village maiden trying to trap him in that complicated, confounding dance called courtship.

Gretel leaned back on her elbows, smiling, wanting him. Simple as that. Flirting wasn’t a thing they did, had never been something they tried. With them it was just _understood_. Courtship never entered into it.

The firelight warmed the hue of her dirty, damp chemise to gold. She shimmered and glowed on the narrow bed, bright and beautiful as an icon on an altar. Hansel knelt before her, reverent, sure-handed, palming her thighs with a confidence he’d never felt with any other.

Gretel could have been coy, could have flattered or teased, asked him some dumb question like “do you want me?” as though she didn’t already know the answer. But Gretel wasn’t coy. She was just Gretel, his very own Gretel, and he knew her better than he knew himself.

Knew that a thumb trailed, feather-light, up the inside of her thigh would make her sigh and close her eyes.

Knew that pressing hard kisses up the column of her throat, nipping her neck, pinning her gently in place would make her shiver with pleasure beneath him.

Knew that, once she’d ground against his hand until he felt the slick warmth of her coat his palm, all he had to do to make her come was press himself against her, the strength of his desire throbbing against her stomach, and whisper “hey, sis. Remember that time in Belsen when they needed a virgin to open the gate to Hell, so you fucked me on their altar and we burned ‘em all to ash?”

She cried out, high and clear, shattering beneath him. Tonight the very notes of her ecstasy pushed him over. He spent on the hem of her blouse with a bone-shaking tremor and an anything-but-eloquent grunt.

But that was the best part of being them. With Gretel, he didn’t have to be eloquent; didn’t need to flirt or charm or spin pretty words with nothing behind them. When it came to his sister Hansel never had to worry he would say the wrong thing, because he didn't need to say anything. There was nothing he could tell her. She'd been at his side for all of it, right where she belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw your letter in the DYW post, and your description of why you enjoyed the movie intrigued me so much that I had to watch it. So basically _thank you_ , and I hope you enjoyed the fic. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
